New Montana Republican Party rules for officeholders appear to defy the state Constitution by demanding loyalty oaths and punishing elected officials, potentially including the governor, for going against the wishes of party leadership, a District court judge suggested Monday.
Lewis and Clark County District Judge Michael McMahon delivered the remarks at the end of a four-hour hearing about whether to make a current restraining order against the state Republican Party permanent.
At issue are bylaws passed at the GOP platform convention in June that require from party members and elected Republicans an “affirmation of support” of the state party organization and allow the party to rescind membership for “conduct deemed inconsistent with party purposes,” as determined by executive party officers. Under the new bylaws, members can also be expelled for not paying newly required annual party dues.
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“I’d be eager to read your argument with respect to Article 3, Section 3 of the Montana Constitution, and how the loyalty oath doesn’t subvert the oath that executive branch members, judiciary members, legislative members and people of the public trust have to take,” McMahon said to Justin Oliveira, attorney for MTGOP.
McMahon said it appeared that the Republican Party was learning at the hearing that the state Constitution does not allow qualifying oaths other than the oath of office.
Republicans are coming off a series of multimillion-dollar primary election battles for state legislative seats. The battles pitted party hardliners against centrists who have successfully collaborated with the state’s Republican governor and minority-party Democrats to prevail on key legislation, including a constitutionally required balanced state budget and higher taxes on second homes to offset rising property taxes on primary residences.
Oliveira told McMahon that it remains to be seen whether the new bylaws might result in the kind of punitive action suggested by the Republican plaintiffs who sued to block the bylaws. Those plaintiffs include county-level party committees, state legislators and publicly elected precinct officers.
“This whole case is hypothetical,” Oliveira said. “It’s based on speculative theories of harm and hypothetical situations. Nobody’s been threatened with stripping of their Republican title.”
McMahon also suggested that the bylaws could undermine the loyalty that elected public officials owe to voters.
“There’s certainly that threat,” McMahon said. “Let’s say that happens in the next legislative session. Gov. Gianforte could be called on the carpet by the Montana GOP because he disagreed with a bill that the GOP wants passed.
“Do these bylaws subvert the bipartisan discussion amongst members of the legislative branch trying to determine what’s best for Montana citizens? Let’s take a Republican senator who is working not only with Republican senators but also Democratic senators, and maybe independent senators, on trying to pass a bill that’s in the best interest of Montana residents. Is the moment he picks up the phone, or she picks up the phone, and talks to a Democrat a violation of the bylaws?”
Following the 2025 legislative session, nine Republican state senators who participated in bipartisan coalitions were disenfranchised at the state GOP’s June convention, at which party officers were elected. They were asked to leave their seats and stand at the back of the room, after which voting members elected current Chair Art Wittich, who ran on a platform of vetting Republican candidates to “determine that they are good for the party.”
“We need to stop lying,” Wittich said before his election as chair. “We need to stop lying to the people of Montana. We need to stop lying to ourselves.”
Republican state Rep. Brad Barker, of Red Lodge, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, testified at Monday’s hearing that the party was wrong to ban nine state senators from voting for party leadership at the June 2025 party convention. Those lawmakers, elected by the public, had a right to represent their constituents in the selection of party leaders, he said.
Barker also challenged his party’s vetting of candidates. After using campaign consultants who have previously worked on Democratic campaigns, Barker was declared by the GOP executive board in April to no longer be a Republican. Barker defeated his Republican primary opponent by a 27% margin in June.
Much of the hearing on the new bylaws centered on publicly elected precinct officers, the committeemen and committeewomen who serve as grassroots party liaisons within voting precincts. These low-level officeholders also vote on county-level political committees and ultimately determine leadership of the party.
There has been a surge of public interest in service as precinct officers. In Flathead County, second in Montana only to Yellowstone County in resident Republican voters, more than 60 new precinct officers were elected in the June primary election.
The new Republican bylaws require annual membership dues and pledges of loyalty from those precinct officers, who can be suspended or removed from office for “conduct deemed inconsistent with party purposes.” The new bylaws allow charges for removal to be brought by any 20 official Republican Party members.
Those rules create a scenario in which a publicly elected precinct officer could be removed from office and replaced by the private organization. Former state legislator Frank Garner, of Kalispell, testified that Wittich, who in June lost his race for precinct officer in Flathead County, could ultimately remove the person he lost to and appoint himself.
“The state party chair, Mr. Wittich, lost a precinct race by a substantial margin,” Garner said. “The person that won his precinct race and is to be seated on that committee could be removed because they didn’t take the oath, or they didn’t pay the $20, or they were found to be not substantially in compliance with the party.”
Garner sponsored a bill in 2019 to protect publicly elected party precinct committee officers from being arbitrarily removed from office. The bill, which passed on a bipartisan vote, defined attempts to remove precinct members as “fraudulent and corrupt.”
Wittich, who is also an attorney, did not attend Monday’s hearing. Debbie Churchill, the current MTGOP director, sat at the defense table with Oliveira.
The party questioned the involvement of two plaintiff organizations, the Yellowstone County Republican Central Committee and the Choteau County Republican Central Committee, suggesting that the Yellowstone Committee didn’t have the approval of precinct officers to participate in the lawsuit. The latter, the party said, didn’t have a legitimate precinct officer, though MTGOP at least twice recognized a representative from Choteau County in the last year.
Witnesses from the county central committees said they were inadequately notified about attempts to change the bylaws prior to the convention, and would have attended to argue against the changes had they known.
Party rules committee member Jennifer Fielder said the bylaws were strongly supported by voters at the June platform convention. She said the new bylaws are necessary to keep Democrats from infiltrating the GOP. The party, she argued, has a right to control its membership.
But the party’s organizational rights have to be in balance with the benefits it receives from participating in state government, and should recognize the rights of the public, argued plaintiffs’ attorney Mike Talia.
When a legislator leaves office mid-term, the party is allowed to present three replacement nominees for local county government to select from. Voters elect a presidential candidate, but it’s the party that nominates three electors to cast the state’s electoral college votes, Talia argued. And it’s Montana primary election voters who select which candidates will represent the party in the general election and who will represent the public on precinct committees.
“The party doesn’t have to send electors. The state can do that. The party doesn’t have to nominate candidate vacancies. The state could do it,” Talia said. “The party wants to swim in that pool. The party wants to play in the government public space. The party is subject to reasonable regulation.”
No final ruling was made Monday. McMahon gave the parties two weeks to submit post-hearing briefs, after which he’ll decide whether to block the bylaws permanently.
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